Senators John Thune of South Dakota and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota sent a letter to the US Department of Agriculture, calling for an economic analysis of rail service challenges facing agricultural shippers. South Dakota Corn Grower’s Executive Director Lisa Richardson says the state is very dependent on rail shipments.
Richardson says the biggest problem now is the cost to move commodities by rail.
Richardson says currently there’s about 80 million bushels of last year’s corn in South Dakota sitting and waiting to move. She says in addition there’s a very large wheat harvest coming out of both North and South Dakota that needs to get shipped.